Archefire Newsletter - August 2025
Ahoy, ahoy! Welcome to the August edition of the Archefire Newsletter, in which we discuss not August, but July. I've always thought that was a strange disconnect, but what can one do? Calling this the July newsletter and sending it in August would be far more egregious. Weep, for we are bound by the twisted skein of causality, our words forever doomed to remain symbols of past imagination.
Can you tell I never have a plan for how to start these things?
July was a productive month overall, despite some time being stolen by illness. First, a sinus infection that wiped out my energy for a week, then Benny and Rachel both catching a stomach bug. Luckily, everyone is on the mend now. But even with these setbacks, I'm feeling great!
I regret to inform you that sticking to a sleep schedule will at least double your productivity. At least it has for me. My stubborn reluctance to go to bed early for 20 years has cost me untold mornings full of possibility. Even one month of a strict bedtime and waketime—enforced by an alarm that foists challenging math problems upon my dream-addled brain—has enabled me to kick some serious derriere (pardon my French).
Sibling Suns 3
I mentioned last month that "progress on my first drafts tends to start slowly then ramp up as I get further into the story." Good news! 'Further into the story', in this case, meant five chapters. I finished seven chapters this month, as opposed to last month's four.
At the risk of invoking the ire of the Gods of Nonlinearity once more, I'll say that if I continue writing at this rate, I'll finish the book in about eight months. That's two months ahead of schedule, a.k.a. two months afforded to polish the ever-loving merde out of this book. I keep telling you: this finale is going to be hype.
I'm curious to see what you think of the structure of this book. So far, I've written every single book in a different way. I guess I just can't help it; it's in my nature to experiment. That naturally reflects in the structure of the book.
For example, I wrote To Burn All Belief one POV at a time. I wrote all of Grim's chapters, then all of Lorelay's, then all of Garret's—at least up to the third act when their stories all converge. After finishing, I had to decide how to order all the chapters (and I made a big mistake, which an alpha reader rescued me from!) This time, I've established the chapter order for Parts I, III, and IV already (don't ask me about Part II), so I'm writing the book from beginning to end, jumping from character to character.
How will this affect the pacing of the story? It's impossible to say until much later, after I've given myself a bit of space to emotionally detach from the book. But right now, in my fully emotionally invested headspace, I'll tell you that the beginning is balls-to-the-wall. There's a lot of ground to cover! For a while, I thought I'd need a fourth book to get through it all. No room for wasted pages, in other words, and I'm loving it.
This book is incredible
I warned you I'd be engaging in shameless self-promotion from now on in these newsletters. Don't say I didn't warn you!
In seriousness, I think one of reasons I've always had trouble selling the Sibling Suns series is because it starts with a mystery. The protagonist doesn't know what the abyss he's getting himself into, and part of me always felt I should maintain that surprise for the reader.
Well enough of that! The book's entire hook is what happens after Grim discovers what's really going on. Am I seriously not going to tell you this is a story about people who transform into Lovecraftian monsters when they die? Am I supposed to keep it a secret that in their terrifying last moments, with unbearable emotions surging, their bodies are broken and molded into nightmare figures? How foolish would I be to elide that our heroes must fight these abominations who distort reality with emotion-warping illusions, driving the protagonists to insanity if they fail to remember what's real?
That would be silly. Instead, these Benefactors, as the monsters are called, should be the focus of my marketing efforts. The mystery shifts from "there are monsters!?" to "WHY are there monsters!?", which is a far more interesting question anyway. One with an answer that goes back thousands of years, if Grim can survive long enough to discover it.
You can find An Ocean of Others on Amazon, Audible, and Spotify.
Or you can buy it directly from the Archefire Store and support independent publishing rather than big tech companies. 😉
Epic Sale of Beloved SFF 2025
While I'm talking about the Archefire Store, I should mention that there's going to be a sale from August 7 to August 11. All of my books, along with 100+ more indie titles, will be $0.99 or free for the sale's duration!
Be sure to check back at the Archefire Store in a few days for discounts and a link to all the other books on sale—or follow me on X for reminders once it begins.
New Indie Book Reviews Page
This month's website update is on the smaller side, but it's something that's been bugging me. Whenever you clicked the Reviews button at the top of my page, it just linked to joshse.com/tag/indie-review/ which contains every post I tagged as 'indie review'.
Now it links to joshse.com/reviews, a dedicated landing page for all indie reviews. They look somewhat similar, but the design is more responsive now, and I've added search and filtering functionality. That way, you can narrow it down by Genre or by competition (such as when I was judging for SPSFC 2).
Like I said, quite a minor change. But it's one less page that needs a new coat of paint! I had hoped to have another review or two to accompany the update. Unfortunately, I've grown rather impatient with books lately, finding myself prone to DNF'ing at the earliest opportunity if it doesn't grab me right away. I've even thrown some directly into the trash after deciding I didn't like them. Why let them rot on the shelf where they'll go unread forever? I don't know what's come over me. In any case, you can be sure that if a new review appears here that it's for a book that truly captured me—one that will be worth your time.
Casual Book Reports
Separate from my reviews, which I generally only write for self-published books, I'm going to start writing some essays for nonfiction books I've enjoyed. I'll share the beginning of one here, which includes an explanation what prompted this. Feel free to skip to the Nazgul update if it's not your cup of tea.
Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield
I'm trying something new here. I recently picked up a stack of books that interest me all centered around mythology, language, fantasy, psychology, archetypes, and the nature of what is real. These topics have been resonating with me recently as an author, and in reading these books, I want to do more than just read them and put them down. I want to sit with the ideas for a while after turning the last page.
I figure that means I should write about them.
That's what this is. Except I'm not writing this post, per se. Instead, I'm dictating it and using a transcription software to put it to text, with a bit of editing to clean it up. This post may seem a little bit more rambly, but that's because it's off the top of my head. I just want to get my raw thoughts for this book down.
Rather than write this like a book review, I'm just going to share all of the underlined and highlighted text that resonated with me as I read the book, then share my thoughts on each of the snippets.
For context, this book, Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield, was beloved by Tolkien and Lewis. Barfield was an infrequent member of their Inklings literary group that would meet around Oxford. C.S. Lewis wrote to Barfield about the influence he had on Tolkien's philosophy:
"You might like to know that when Tolkien dined with me the other night he said, apropos of something quite different, that your conception of the ancient semantic unity had modified his whole outlook."
In Poetic Diction, Barfield puts forth the argument that over time language becomes less poetic because...
Gûlius Caesar
I'm light on pictures of Emperor Gûlius Caesar this month. Mostly they're just pictures of him laying around with Benny (and they're super cute). Instead of that, I've decided the Gûl should grace your screen in motion. Behold!
All right, I'll give you one more photo. But only because I snapped it at this very moment.
The Shadow lurks.
That's it for this month! Be sure to grab a discounted book (or twelve) from the Beloved SFF Sale on August 7. I've got my eye on a few good books myself.
As always, thanks for reading!
— Josh